A Dump of Mildly Interesting Photos

1. In Iraq, in the book market, books remain in the street at night because Iraqis say: the reader does not steal and the thief does not read

2. The handwriting on a Russian medical prescription

3. Man after receiving 40 Sieverts of radiation.. More than 1 Sievert of radiation will make you sick and may kill you, more than 3 will almost surely kill you.

4. The Libertarian way to leave a “tip”

5. One of Saddam Hussein’s thrones at Al Faw Palace in Baghdad, Iraq in 2008

6. In Finland, PhDs are awarded sword as a symbol to defend what’s right and true

7. B-17 Flying Fortress Cockpit

8. The Woman Makes Prosthetic Pinkies for Ex-Yakuza Members

9. This Roller Coaster Will Literally Kill You
Here’s how the world’s oddest suicide method would work: First the rider would face a long, slow climb up to more than 500 meters, giving him or her a few minutes to think back on life and contemplate the decision. At the top, there would be time to say a prayer or blow a kiss to relatives (or bail) before pressing the “fall” button and plummeting into the long steep plunge followed by the first 360-degree loop. That’s where most riders would die. According to Urbonas, traveling at 100 meters per second, the person would experience a G-force-induced loss of consciousness due to cerebral hypoxia (lack of oxygen reaching the brain), which often causes a sense of euphoria. Just in case that first one didn’t do it, six more consecutive loops would finish the job. Building the structure would be a challenge. The Euthanasia Coaster would be more than three times the height of the world’s tallest roller coaster, the Kingda Ka, which took 18 months and $25 million to construct.

10. State Hall of the Austrian National Library

11. Freedom of press map 2017 (by Reporters without borders)

12. The largest land vehicle ever built: Bagger 293 in Germany
Deemed the largest land vehicle in history by the Guinness Book of World Records, the Bagger 293 is the single best digging machine man has ever built.
Built in 1995, this bucket wheel excavator is 315 feet tall—dwarfing the Statue of Liberty—738 feet wide and weighs more than 31 million pounds or 15,500 tons. Given all of that size, you’d think it takes a huge crew to run one. But you’d be wrong. Two people run the show.
Its buzz saw-like 70-foot rotating wheel consists of a series of 20 buckets that easily and constantly slice into the earth’s surface, efficiently removing thousands upon thousands of pounds of overburden, the waste soil mining operations need to remove before getting to the coal below.
Once the dirt has been scooped up, it’s transported by the conveyor belt running along the machine’s massive arm to the much smaller dump trucks below that will carry it off.
The Bagger 293 is the largest machine of its kind but has several smaller siblings. The bucket wheel excavator has been around since the 1920s.

22. Danny Devito, behind the scenes, as Penguin in the movie Batman Returns

23. Antilia in Mumbai, India is the most expensive private residence in the world, worth over $1,000,000,000! The 27-storey, 400,000 square feet tower is eight miles away from one of the most densely populated slums where an estimated 1.3 million people live for every one square mile

24. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

25. The morning light comes to Cemoro Lawang, Indonesia.

26. Graveyard shift: April 1986

27. There’s a memorial sitting on the Moon for every astronaut who died in the pursuit of space exploration, including Russian Cosmonauts

28. Generation gap

29. The most expensive Bonsai tree in the world. Over 300 years old – $1.3 million

30. Overhead view of Space Shuttle Atlantis on the Mobile Launcher Platform as it traveled to Launch Pad 39A from the Vehicle Assembly Building. Atlantis lifted off on Mission STS-79 on September 16, 1996.

31. Team work.

32. Pakistani hippies rolling up a joint in Karachi, 1973

33. Avery Bradley comforting Isaiah Thomas before the game against the Bulls…his sister was killed in a car accident the night before

34. Fans pack Chicago Stadium, at the time the largest indoor sports arena in the world, prior to a hockey game between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Boston Bruins, 1930

35. Woman Attacked for Running the Boston Marathon in 1967 Ran It Again, 50 Years Later. Katharine Switzer in 2017

36. Spotted at Cortes Bank near San Diego, California, a curious harbor seal swims through an underwater kelp forest.

37. Yunnan, China.

38. Rancho Cucamonga, California.

39. Abandoned Mansion that belonged to a former corrupt police chief of Mexico. His yearly salary was $1300